Across the Galaxy
by Kgirl1
Summary: It doesn't matter if it's a nightmare or a vision; they're torturing her either way. But Ezra doesn't need to know that. Post Rebel Assault. Chapter two: Kanan and Sabine come to terms about Hera's capture.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This takes place after "Rebel Assault." Given the structures we've seen on the southern hemisphere of Lothal, I envision the crew sleeping in tiny, individual caves (think one size above hovels) that are curtained off for privacy and set within a larger cave. I think it makes sense whether the rebels are on the south side of the planet, since those caves looked at least somewhat developed, or back at their original base, and just pressed for space. I hope having that image in your head will help this make a little more sense. (P.S. There's a 90 percent change Room for One More will get an update tomorrow!) Anyways, read on.**

* * *

Kanan shot awake, breathing hard. His hair grazed the cave ceiling as he flew up from his pallet, and he gasped for air, his panicked breaths rupturing the silence of night. Sweat ran in rivulets down his back, and his heart pounded hard enough to burst from his ribcage.

He was used to waking up in the dark, but now he felt like it was closing in on him, the silence of the cave a living straitjacket. Instinctively he reached out for Hera, remembering the second he moved his hand that she wouldn't be there. His skin was crawling, his palms were slick, and each breath he took was as shaky as the last. He sat there, chest heaving and blind eyes darting madly around the cave, as he tried without success to calm himself down.

"Kanan?" Ezra's voice came muffled from outside his door, and anxiety jolted in his stomach. "You okay?"

Kanan took a shaky breath and cleared his throat. "I'm fine."

It sounded like a lie even to his own ears.

"You sure?" He could feel his apprentice hovering in front of the curtain.

"Ezra, I'm fine," Kanan said, and clenched his fingernails into his palms to convince himself of it. His hands were shaking.

Outside the cave was silence, but not absence. He sensed the boy wavering, shifting from foot to foot. There was something in his Force signature that kept trying to reach out to Kanan, only to shrink back.

"You were dreaming about Hera," Ezra finally said, making it sound like a question. Kanan's skin prickled with apprehension, but then he heaved a sigh.

"Yeah, Ezra," he said. "Yeah, I was."

Another quiet shuffle, as Ezra wafted from one foot to the other.

"Can… can I come in?"

Admitting the nightmare had taken some of the pressure off his chest, and Kanan finally took a deep, clear breath. He raised his hand, and the curtain between them lifted. Fully exposed to Kanan's Force sight, Ezra seemed smaller, his shoulders heavy as he entered the room. Kanan moved over, gesturing to his pallet, and Ezra sat down next to him.

"I felt it. In the Force," he said quietly. He didn't look at Kanan as he spoke. "What happened?"

Kanan heard his voice in his ears, hoarse and taut, before he realized he'd decided to speak. "They were torturing her."

Ezra seemed to shrink even further into himself. "I was worried you'd say that."

Kanan was silent, both lacking words of comfort and too tired to search for them. Ezra pulled his knees into his chest.

"Do you… do you think it was a vision?" He asked. "Like, do you think it was real? Or just a nightmare?"

Kanan could hear the hope in the boy's voice, fragile and thin as frost. The truth was that it didn't matter—they _were_ torturing Hera, whether he dreamed about it or not.

But Ezra didn't need to know that.

"It was just a nightmare," he said, feeling sick as the lie grew. "They won't torture Hera. She's too important."

Ezra was so silent that Kanan checked for his presence in the Force.

When the boy finally spoke, his voice was small. "Are you lying?"

The question sent a chill down his back, and Kanan's stomach twisted with guilt. He didn't dare confirm it, but his silence spoke more than words could have. The air between them shifted.

"Don't _do_ that." Ezra's tone changed, and he turned to Kanan accusatorily. "You don't have to protect me—"

"It's not just you I'm protecting, Ezra." Kanan's voice rose. He clenched his teeth. The silence between them thrummed with tension, and it swelled oppressively, until Kanan was sure his Padawan would storm out.

Ezra just heaved a sigh.

"Sorry," he mumbled.

Kanan exhaled. "Me too."

He heard Ezra scraping the dirt floor. "Kanan?" He asked.

"Yeah, Ezra?"

His Padawan's voice was small. "Will we get her back?"

Kanan felt something break deep within his chest at the question. He took a deep breath before answering.

"You'll get her back."

Ezra's head whipped toward him with alarm; the pronoun change had been unmistakable.

"Kanan—"

Kanan lifted his hand. "It's late. You should get some sleep."

"But Kanan—"

"Sleep," he said firmly. He could feel anxiety pulsing from his Padawan like a heartbeat, but Ezra said no more. He stood so slowly and woodenly that Kanan thought he might creak.

Ezra hesitated just before the door. "Kanan?"

"Yeah?"

"If you have any more nightma—… I mean, if you can't sleep or anything… I'm right next door."

Despite himself, Kanan felt the corners of his lips tug up. "Thanks, Ezra."

"Yeah. No problem." Ezra ducked under the curtain and slipped out, and just like that, his room was cold again. Involuntarily, Kanan felt his hands begin to tremble, and he consciously blocked himself off from Ezra's mind. Hera's cries rang fresh in his ears—every time he closed his eyes he saw electricity crackling across her body, blades piercing her lekku, indigo blood dripping onto the floor. Kanan shuddered and shifted into a meditative position, hoping to stave off the nightmare.

* * *

Across the galaxy, Hera Syndulla glared at Arihnda Pryce, her view half-obscured by a swollen eye. Blood trickled from her lekku, but she couldn't remember the last time they'd cut her there; specific wounds had long since dissolved into the blur of torture, and her body no longer held a map of the inflictions so much as a dull, constant ache.

"One way or another, we'll get the answers we seek," Pryce said, regarding the twi'lek with ice in her voice. "You only suffer for your pride."

Hera was silent save her eyes, which blazed with defiance.

"Very well," Pryce sighed. "I'll ask again, for formality's sake. Where is the location of the rebel base?"

Hera kept her face blank, meeting Pryce's gaze dead-on. The human woman's eye twitched, and she reached for the control panel.

Bolts of electricity streaked across Hera's body, and her back arched clear off the table as a cry burst from her lips.

Across the galaxy, caught in the shadows between sleep and nightmare, Kanan Jarrus clenched his fists.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I've actually had some of this written for a while, as a drabble that popped into my head. Then "Rebel Assault" happened, and the timing worked out.**

* * *

Sabine's boots were snaring, as she trudged through Lothal's plains, both delaying her progress and fueling her ire. She kicked at the long grasses in vain, only to become more entangled, and by the time she reached the Jedi she'd been aiming for, nests of the blasted stuff had woven around her boots.

She huffed, coming to a stop. "Kanan, I've been looking everywhere for you."

He made no reply.

Her brow furrowed. "What are you doing all the way out here?"

He still didn't turn around. "Thinking."

"Thinking?" Sabine's eyebrows went up. "In case you haven't noticed, Kanan, we need to be doing a lot more than thinking."

Kanan was silent.

"Have you come up with a plan?" She asked slowly. Unease began filtering into her stomach. "Or… even thought about the idea that we need one?"

"I have," he said.

"Well, we're not gonna plan anything out here," she said, gesturing back toward their base.

He didn't move.

"Kanan." Sabine felt her frustration burning hotter as she waited for him to turn around. "Come on."

"Sabine, it's okay," he said, far too calmly for her liking. Sabine lost it.

"It's okay?" She demanded. "It's okay?! What do you mean, it's okay? Hera's _captured_ , Kanan. She's gone. Maybe forever, and you're just _standing_ there, like you don't even care!"

"You don't know anything." His voice was eerily composed, and that angered her further.

"I do _too!_ I'm not a little kid anymore, Kanan, you don't get to tell me what to think!"

"I never said you were a little kid."

"That's not the point!" She practically screeched. "Hera could be dying, for all we know! They could be torturing her right now—"

"Hera's strong. She'll be alright."

"You don't _know_ that!" It took everything Sabine had not to scream. "Kanan, don't you get it?! We have to do something! I can't sit around like this anymore!"

This time, he didn't even give a response. Sabine watched his back, stiff and unmoving, as Kanan faced Lothal's plains. Pieces of his hair lifted with the wind, the only sign that the Jedi was still on the planet, while Sabine herself was shaking with rage.

"Say something!" She finally spat.

Kanan whipped around, and only then did she realize that his mask was gone.

"I love her!" He roared. "You want me to say something? How's that?"

The anger on his face was astonishing, and Sabine was too stunned to reply. Kanan took a step closer to her, gesturing angrily.

"Or would you like me to add that she's everything that I am, that she's so much a part of me that I feel like I'm the one who's lost? Do you need verbal confirmation that this place doesn't feel like home and that nothing feels the same? That I feel like I'm walking around in unknown territory because she was my only map?"

His hands, thrown wide, slowly came down to his sides, as Kanan took a deep breath and exhaled with restraint. She watched him fearfully.

"I have a thousand things to say about Hera's absence, Sabine," Kanan said. His eyes were hard. "But that's not what a leader does. And I know it's not what Hera did when I was captured."

Her cheeks burned with shame. He was staring at her straight on, milky eyes bold and unapologetic, and even though he couldn't see her, she couldn't hold his gaze.

Sabine stared at her feet. "I… I'm sorry," she said.

After a tense moment, the warmth of his hand found her shoulder. She looked up into Kanan's blind eyes.

"Me too," he said.

A sob welled up in her throat, but Sabine choked it down. His lips parted, but she spoke before he could.

"I just… we have to do something," she said, and pulled her arm out from his touch to wipe her eyes. Kanan frowned.

"We will," he said.

"But when?" She demanded.

A shadow darkened his face. "I don't know yet."

Sabine flung her arms out. "How can you be so calm about this? We should be storming that Star Destroyer right now—"

"Do you think I _want_ to wait around like this, Sabine?" He gestured. "Do you think it's easy for me, knowing her life is in their hands?"

She was so frustrated that she could have screamed, but she just dropped her hands and shook her head. "No."

"You're right. It's not. It's not easy for any of us," he said. "But this is what she would have wanted."

"That doesn't mean it's _right—_ "

He was actually laughing at her. _Laughing._ Sabine saw red.

" _What?"_ She hissed.

"Usually with Hera, it does," Kanan said. Something about the smirk dancing on his face, pulling at the corners of his sightless eyes, the expression so familiar to her but so different now; something about realizing that Kanan had probably given Hera this smirk a thousand times and that they had so much history together, history that extended well past Sabine's knowledge of the _Ghost_ and its crew, and that he would never truly see her reaction to it again, that he would never see _her_ again, that there was a very real possibility that _none_ of them would ever see her again; something about all of this at once flattened her and made her feel infinitesimally small, and while she had been trying not to laugh she now found herself trying not to cry.

And then his arms were around her, and he had pulled her into a wordless embrace, and it was just the warm, strong solidness of his chest holding her to reality, and she was sobbing openly, the front of his tunic sticky with her tears, and she loved him at that moment, loved him for not even trying to nudge her away like the part of her, the part of her that was Mandalore, all warrior, all fire and steel, was screaming at him to.

 _Don't let me cry,_ she couldn't help but think. _Mandalorians don't cry._

Sabine had cried in front of her mother once.

 _Mandalorians don't cry, Sabine._

The first and the last time.

But Ursa wasn't here, there was only Kanan, and right now, she was glad for that.

Her shoulders eventually stopped shaking; her sobs gave way to gentle, apologetic sniffles.

"We will get her back, Sabine."

She felt his voice rumble through his chest as much as she heard it, and something about that was deeply comforting.

"We just have to be patient," he said.

Sabine's sniffling became a chuckle. She stepped back, wiped her eyes, and with a deep breath and a brave grin up at him, said, "Neither of us has ever been very good at that."

The tiniest smile cracked his lips. "First time for everything."

* * *

 **(A/N: I realize that in the previous chapter, Kanan specifically says "You'll get her back" to Ezra. He's feeling tired and hopeless in that moment, whereas here, in a better, resolved frame of mind, he says "we," primarily to avoid exacerbating Sabine's distress. What a good spacedad.)**


End file.
